On 30 May 2007 at 05:38:19 -0700, William Pietri william@scissor.com wrote:

And here we have a fine example of the problem caused by refusing to link to pages on or say the name of sites where people do things we don't like. When I went and took a brief look at Wikipedia Review, what I saw was yet another internet forum, somewhat more negative in tone and with a higher proportion of kooks, but otherwise not very different than what I'd expect in the comments section of one of Nicholas Carr's columns about Wikipedia. Undermedicated people with an internet forum? Or gibbering demons with sinister plans to destroy Wikipedia? Beats me.

Seem to be a few of each... though mostly it seems like they're just fantasizing about how somebody else is going to destroy Wikipedia soon... maybe by lawsuit, or by getting Congress to ban it, or by convincing Important People in High Places to "Do Something" about it... but none seem to actually have the ability or inclination to actually put anything in action to accomplish such a thing, beyond hinting at some petty vandalism campaign that will cause much less damage than the ones orchestrated on national TV by Stephen Colbert (which we are getting quite good at quickly squelching).

There's another example in Gracenotes' RFA. I saw someone concerned that he had posted on Wikipedia Review. And I saw another person suggesting we shouldn't even mention the name Wikipedia Review. Was Gracenotes' alleged post a reasonable attempt to reach out to and engage our critics, something I routinely encourage? Or was he leading a conspiracy to eat babies with grapefruit spoons? Did he post at there all? Who knows.

"Reach out and engage our critics"... a very good point, and I've added it to the bullet points of reasons why some might want to link to such sites in my essay.

Pretty much any other time people make an accusation of nefarious behavior on Wikipedia, we investigate it to death, with links galore, so that any reasonable person can find the truth of things. We, as a community, are *amazing* at that. I think that commitment to collaborative, reasoned judgment is one of our deepest strengths, and one of the things that has allowed us to scale so massively.

Yes... the spirit of open inquiry that's always been something I've liked about Wikipedia (and the Internet in general... and in fact the "geek ethic" in general, with the "Information wants to be free" mindset), and which I regard this whole "attack sites policy" thing to be a temporary but ugly aberration from.